MARCH MADNESS brings the roar of the crowd and thunder of floor-vibrating excitement to basketball championships in gymnasiums across the county. But for Pleasanton’s Debbie Ayres, the floor-vibrating means the most to her.

Ayres is the women’s basketball coach for the California School for the Deaf in Fremont and her team can’t hear her give audible directions from the sidelines. Stomping on the floor is just one method she uses to communicate with her team on the court.

And it seems her methods are paying off. The Eagles women’s varsity basketball team topped off a 15-7 season (7-2 league) by earning second place in the North Coast Section championships this month in their division, with senior Alicia Jones chosen as co-MVP of the Bay Counties League.

This was just one of many championship seasons for Ayres, who first came to the school 12 years ago after five years as head coach at Cal State Fullerton.

Ayres began coaching basketball in 1980 after graduating from Chico State. In her first jobs at the middle and high school levels, she realized she had a knack for transforming raw talent into winning teams.

“I’d never played in school but I really seemed to connect with the girls and enjoyed the game,” she recalled. “As a high school coach I was learning, but when I wanted to move to the college level, I wanted to learn from the best.”

Ayres ended up finishing her master’s degree at the University of Tennessee while an assistant coach to Pat Summitt. ﻿”It was an awesome experience. She asked me to stay on to work on my Ph.D., but I missed coaching and wanted my own team.”

Ayres then spent two years at Solano Junior College and led that team to the state tournament before heading to Fullerton.

Twelve years ago, she decided to pursue her dream of coaching at a deaf school, in particular the School for the Deaf in Fremont — which happened to be looking for an experienced coach for a group of athletic freshmen girls.

After the excitement of being hired, Ayres addressed the question of how she would teach. “I didn’t know American Sign Language 12 years ago,” recalled Ayres, who initially faced a language barrier and resistance from parents. Fortunately, the resistance fell away after the team won the Western States Deaf Basketball Championship in her first year.

“Everything is communicated in sign language at the school, so a few girls who were hard of hearing would translate for me,” she said. Eventually they developed “classifiers” — a combination of hand movements, facial expressions and body language — to create ASL translations for basketball terminology such as “in the key” and “box out.”

During games, Ayres communicates by using her entire body, ASL classifiers, and her fingers and hands to signal what she wants her players to do.

“Hearing teams can holler to the girls. We can’t do that,” Ayres said. “So at every dead ball opportunity, the kids need to look at me and I have to communicate something.

“On the court, you’ll see me stomping on the floor to get their attention because they can feel the vibrations from my shoes. I also wave my arms a lot,” she said, adding, “Thank goodness I was a cheerleader in school.”

In her first six years at the California School for the Deaf, she led the team to the Western States Deaf Basketball Championships three times. In 2001, they won the National Deaf Championships and in 2002, Ayres coached the United States Deaf National Team to a gold medal in the World Games in Athens, Greece. This month’s win was their first in the mainstream women’s basketball league.

Now when asked how she teaches deaf players, Ayres confidently answers: “It happens through your heart. They see that you care about them and have a passion for the sport. I don’t see them as being deaf. Sometimes I feel I have deeper conversations with them than if I was talking with a speaking person. Somehow you manage to communicate.”

Read more about athletics at the California School for the Deaf Fremont at www.csdf.k12.ca.us.

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